Last night I watched Offspring, the show about the bumbling and relatively 'life' hopeless "Nina Proudman".. A show about how she stumbles through life, eclectic, eccentric and generally no freaking idea what she's doing.. Nina is a character I totally get and one that resonates within me.. Sometimes I laugh to the point of breathlessness because she could be me...
She lost her partner, her lover, her soulmate and the last few episodes have been dealing with her grief.. Her mothers character in the show 'Geraldine' said something thing last night to her daughter that I just got, I just felt on every level.. She looked at her daughter and vehemently said "It's your grief my darling, and fuck anyone who tells you how to do it.".. In that moment I loved Geraldine like she was my own mother...
I get grief, on my own level.. I grieved for nearly three years for my son who actually survived, my son who is still alive as I write this, but yet I grieved.. I grieved for the two times he died in my arms and in front of me, at 2wks old.. I grieved for his created disability after being born perfect and healthy and beautiful, and that my healthy baby suffered so severely from multiple strokes "just because he did"... I grieved for every single experience he would miss out on as a disabled child, I grieved for the life I wanted for him that he would not be able to live, I grieved for the struggle already past and the struggle yet to come, I grieved for his brother and sister, his father and myself.. I mostly grieved because for the first two years of his life we were told due to his epilepsy condition he would die, he would be a vegetable, he wouldn't survive and one day I would be a parent burying my own child, burying my own heart, my own soul, his life ripped from him before he'd even had a chance to live it.. I grieved so severely all the time not knowing that, that is what it was..
I remember waking up one morning, an epiphany like a burning ball of fire smacking me in the face, and realising that I was in fact not depressed nor not coping but I was in a state of grief and it was ok to be there.
I will never understand anyone else's grief because it's happening to them and affecting their lives in a way I will never comprehend because no one thinks or feels or lives or breaths in life, the same way..
I've had a lot of situations around me in recent years that involved that impermeable wall we call grief, mine and other people's.. In those personal moments when I sat bundled into the tiniest ball trying to squish myself into a size that allowed no space for me to feel anything, and the darkness surrounded my heart and soul, it was excruciating and beyond any pain I had ever felt.. It made me realise I cannot understand other people's pain but I understand my own.. Its unfathomable to even think about walking in someone else's shoes because it is a path we do not know, and will never understand.. We can see the path and know what 'it' is but unless we are that person we can never own their personal pain..
Not understanding someone else's grief is understandable, but ignoring it or pretending it isnt happening or disregarding it or even wondering why it's not happening in this way or it is happening in that way etc is just not ok... We talk about grief rarely, we do it quietly and behind our hands with our eyes looking everywhere but at the grieving person, we are uncomfortable because of the emotion others grief brings up in us but from a personal point of view I can honestly say I never needed anyone to understand my grief I just needed someone.
I needed my friends to step up and be my friends. I needed someone to cry with, to walk with, to talk with. I needed someone to crawl into bed next to me when I was curled up in the dark on a sunshiney day and just hold my hand. I didn't need understanding I just needed my people. I needed to know in my life in those dark moments when I felt like I was free falling, I was doing it somewhere safe and if I landed with a thud it would be less so, because they were there to cushion my fall.. Mostly I needed someone who would just be, who could sit in silence with me without the need to talk, who lacked judgement at my process and who didn't bat an eyelid when my laugh went to a cry and then back to a laugh and just sat on the ride next me, my own roller coaster of emotion. I needed someone to just be.
No one can or does or will ever know your grief. You will never understand another's. You will grieve over lost relationships, lost lifestyles, jobs, people, belongings, loves.. You will grieve over deaths, of your family and friends and pets or not deaths but things not turning out the way you had mapped out your life and dreams.. Sometimes it will be big losses like a parent or a child or a sibling or an unborn child.. It might even be the love of your life.. Be it big or small it's all grief.. Any type you grief you experience is ok because it just "is what it is".. No one can tell you how to do it.. You will do it how you do, the way you do, and it is all ok.. I don't hink my grief will ever stop.. it ebbs and flows, felt and unfelt at differing times and has become a part of me, of us, of our life but the one thing I can tell you though, from experience is that even in the most barren of winters, like a butterfly cocooned awaiting the right time to transform, even in the darkest of grief there is always growth and eventually it will break through to find the sunshine.. Sometimes there really is happiness breaking through even in the saddest moments if we just allow it without feeling guilty about it...
The question is will you trust the process long enough to develop the wings to fly..?? Better yet will you support someone else who's movement appears to have stopped?? Because trust me at the end of the road there in nothing better than having someone look at you in the way they always did and say "hey!! There you are.. It's been a while I'm so glad you've come home.. Wanna dance!?"... Xx
Mama, Madly xo
